The mess hall vibrated with a low, chaotic hum—voices, metal trays, distant alarms—but Kael barely heard any of it. His mind was still tracing the fault lines he had felt beneath the surface: the fragile pull of gravity, the unseen tensions thrumming through Zephyron's broken bones.
They were lining up to return to the cells when it happened.
A guard—young, cocky, and hungry for cruelty—stepped into Sera's path. He spun his baton lazily, smirking.
"Maybe we'll have a little fun with the anomaly tonight," he muttered just loud enough for Kael to hear.
Sera didn't flinch. She stared straight ahead, the slightest tightening around her eyes the only betrayal of emotion.
Kael moved before he thought.
The air warped. The tray at his feet imploded inward like crushed foil. The guard's baton snapped in half with a sharp, metallic screech, pieces clattering to the floor.
The world froze.
Other prisoners shrank away instinctively. The Riftguards snapped to alert, weapons humming to life.
Kael stood, chest heaving, the space around him shimmering subtly with wrongness. Gravity buckled and then righted itself, leaving a nauseating ripple in its wake.
The captain's voice cut through the stunned silence:
"First Strike. Isolation. Throw him in the Hole."
The words hit harder than the stun prods that cracked against Kael's ribs.
He doubled over but refused to cry out.
Sera's gaze found his—sharp, furious, helpless—as the guards descended.
It's alright, Kael thought hazily, as the Black Pulse within him thrummed deeper, louder.
This is the way.
The transport to the Hole was a blur of dragging footsteps and cold laughter.
The deeper they went, the more the world sagged. Gravity twisted, pulling at Kael's very bones. Lights sputtered. Walls groaned. The prison's ancient core was a wound barely stitched shut.
Finally, they arrived: a rusted gate of Riftsteel and old-world runes.
Without ceremony, the guards shoved him through.
Kael stumbled, caught himself—and the gate slammed shut behind him with an iron roar.
He was alone.
Inside the Hole, there were no rules. No up or down. The world folded in on itself, crushing and stretching him in turns.
Kael pressed a hand to the trembling ground, breathing in the heavy air, feeling the relic's presence echo from somewhere deep inside his blood.
The Black Pulse answered.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
This was not death.
This was descent—the beginning of something that could no longer be chained.
Kael closed his eyes.
And started to rise.
Episode 5: "The Calm Before the Break"
The heavy gates groaned open again, flooding the Hole with harsh, artificial light. A squad of Riftguard soldiers marched in, their boots thundering against the trembling ground.
"Subject 17," one barked, voice clipped and metallic through his helm. "Stand."
They expected chaos — another prisoner broken, crawling, begging to be freed from the crushing gravity and the gnawing dark.
Instead, they found Kael.
Sitting cross-legged in the center of the shifting floor, completely still.
Eyes closed.
Breathing slow.
Weightless.
The Hole's gravity spasms barely touched him now. Where before the world had dragged him down, twisted him sideways, now it bowed around him in silent deference.
The air vibrated subtly — the aftershock of something ancient waking inside him.
The guards hesitated, glancing at each other.
As they stepped closer, a faint pulse rippled outward from Kael's body, bending the light subtly at the edges.
One guard stumbled, catching himself against the wall. "What the—?"
Another drew a shock-baton, thumb hovering over the activation rune.
Kael opened his eyes.
They were the same deep gray — but now, something else churned within them.
A calm gravity.
A depth vast enough to drown in.
The relic's Black Pulse thudded in time with his heart, deep and heavy, but now... it listened to him. It moved with him.
One soldier, more nervous than the rest, stepped forward and jabbed at Kael with an electric prod.
Before contact could even be made, the prod bent — warping in his hand as invisible forces distorted it.
The soldier yelped, dropping it.
Around Kael, the gravity twitched again, a soft ripple — and tiny pebbles began orbiting lazily around his still form, like planets around a newborn star.
The captain cursed under his breath and snapped an order:
"Don't engage. Notify Command. He's... changing."
Kael remained motionless.
Inside him, the relic fragment whispered — not in words, but in deep, ancient pulses. It wasn't telling him what to do.
It was simply waiting for him to realize:
He was no longer a prisoner.
He was the gravity.
Without further confrontation, the Riftguard regrouped, uneasy, and motioned for Kael to follow. Weapons still drawn — but they dared not touch him.
Kael rose without a word. The air around him flexed slightly — unseen currents folding neatly back into him as he moved.
The march back to his cell was silent, thick with tension. Other prisoners watched in stunned awe, sensing the change. Even the walls seemed to lean away from Kael's passing.
The heavy cell door clanged shut behind him.
Across the dim corridor, through the fractured stone and twisted steel, Kael caught sight of Sera — her eyes steady, waiting.
He opened his mouth, searching for words, for a way to explain what had awakened inside him.
But Sera only shook her head, smiling softly — as if she'd seen this coming all along.
"No need," she said, her voice almost carried by the broken gravity itself. "I can feel it."
Kael closed his mouth, and for the first time in what felt like forever, allowed himself to breathe.
Not because he was exhausted.
Not because he was beaten.
But because he finally understood.
The storm they'd been waiting for was already inside him.
And soon, it would break the world.
Episode 6: "The Weight of Knowing"
The footage was grainy, warped by gravitational interference, but clear enough.
On the central monitor, Kael sat in the eye of a silent storm—gravity bowing to him, light curving faintly at the edges.
Not fighting.
Not breaking.
Simply being.
Commander Riven watched the screen with a scowl.
"He's destabilizing the fields," one technician whispered. "Localized gravity shifts are spreading. If this continues—"
"Deploy the Anti-Grav Enforcer," Riven snapped. "And activate interrogation protocols for the other anomaly. The girl."
Within minutes, the walls of Sera's cell peeled apart like opening jaws. She stood calmly as the Riftguards surrounded her, gravity pulses tugging at her clothes, her hair.
A tall figure entered—the Anti-Grav Enforcer. Clad in plates that flickered with shifting mass fields, a walking fortress of compressed gravity tech.
He said nothing. He didn't have to.
Instead, another figure approached—an officer. Slim, silver-eyed, speaking with poisonous gentleness.
"You're quite brilliant, aren't you?" he said. "The way you've stabilized yourself here. The way you... adapted."
Sera tilted her head slightly, noncommittal.
The officer leaned in. "Tell us. Help us understand your friend. You've seen it, haven't you? His instability. His... weakness."
Sera's gaze sharpened.
"That boy," the officer continued, voice low and coaxing, "he's not like you. He lacks vision. He'll never measure up to the King's standards. But you—"
A hand gestured toward her, as if offering a crown.
"You could ascend."
Silence.
Sera studied him the way a scholar studies a failed equation. Calm. Unimpressed.
"You misunderstand something," she said at last.
The officer's smile tightened.
"We're not chasing the same goal," Sera continued, voice steady as stone. "You crave domination. Obedience. Safety behind walls you built out of fear."
She stepped forward, the air humming faintly.
"But we," she said, "we seek freedom."
The Anti-Grav Enforcer shifted uneasily, sensing the tremor in the gravity field.
Sera's eyes gleamed—a reflection of countless invisible vectors aligning around her, like a symphony tuning to a single note.
"You could never offer me what I already have," she finished.
The lights overhead flickered once—then died.
In an instant, Kael was no longer in his cell.
He was standing in front of Sera, the darkness wrapping around him like a mantle, ready to show them everything he'd endured and trained for.
Ready to make them understand.